Feckless on the front line?
Trump’s reckless insults cannot mean nothing
Why did Mr Trump refuse to rule out military force to take Greenland? Why did he provoke Denmark by saying it had failed in its duty to protect Greenland? Why did he say that, if Russia invaded another NATO country, the US would not come to its aid? And why, for Heaven’s sake, did he mouth off about the forces of US allies “stay[ing] a little off the frontlines” in Afghanistan?
I have to admit, I was teased at school. Other kids dreamed up nicknames, some even contending that these nicknames had pursued me throughout my scholastic career, when in fact I was hearing them for the first time. Maybe they’d been murmured sotto voce before the confrontations that revealed them to me. But I’ll never really know what prompted these disparaging remarks, these insults, these attempts to put me down. I’m not entirely sure what the insulter gained from me being put down. A sense of smug satisfaction, perhaps: superiority, and top-doggedness. After all, if you’re going to be top dog, you have to be top dog over someone, don’t you?
What do I care? What the name-calling in the playground ultimately did was to define the difference between me and the pesterer. That was nothing more and nothing less than the effect he had had in his sights from the outset: to nail down the fact that he and I were different. Once that was established through the insults, I had no further task to accomplish in the matter: the difference was definitive. Its existence was thereafter something I myself had little alternative but to ignore. The other party felt it necessary from time to time to remind me of it, but that was just one more aspect of the difference between us.
So, back to Mr Trump’s denigration of NATO allies in Afghanistan. I feel very sorry for the soldiers who have been slighted, for the families who have lost loved ones to a vain cause, especially given the rank disregard that the United States president has for their loss, whilst these service personnel were engaged in securing some kind of justice, as our leaders would have it. But, just as I cannot really figure why certain boys at school felt it necessary to put me down simply for not being like them, I have a difficult time in appreciating why Mr Trump would suddenly utter these negative remarks about the armed forces of his nominal allies. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. Especially when his remarks seem to be founded in nonsense.
It is as if Mr Trump expects that frontline soldiers are best honoured if they in fact return from the front line in a body bag. That that is somehow more honourable than coming home hale and hearty. Maybe the allies of the US are better at dodging bullets than US soldiers are. Perhaps that’s the reason that more Americans died. Or maybe the enemy saw US soldiers as a better target: they picked off the Yanks because they hated the Yanks more. Maybe that’s the reason. Maybe Mr Starmer would like to ask Mr Trump these questions: Why, Mr Trump, do you think enemy combatants hate American soldiers more than British ones?
Ned Parfett was a 15-year-old news vendor for the London Evening News, who became immortalised when he was photographed selling his newspapers outside the offices of the White Star Line at Oceanic House, just off London’s Trafalgar Square, following the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912. Here he is:
In 1915, when he had turned 18, and nine months after the 41-year-old Ralph Vaughan Williams had done the same thing in August 1914, he enlisted in the British Army to serve his nation, as had his two older brothers before him. Like the two brothers, Vaughan Williams survived the war despite serving for its entire duration as a stretcher bearer on the front lines in France, and even served as his regiment’s musical director until being demobbed in February 1919. Parfett fought in France for three and a half years, before he was killed in October 1918 on the day he was supposed to return home on leave, and two weeks before the Armistice. He lies interred at Verchain in France.
I mention these two soldiers of the Great War in order to try to gain some kind of perspective on Mr Trump’s remarks. If I’d said that a 22-year-old man had died in France fighting in the First World War, no doubt you’d have sighed and thought to yourself, That is sad, but so many young men’s lives were taken from us in that conflict. He was just one more. And that would be true, but he wasn’t just one more to his mother and father or to his brothers and sisters. And now you know, he was not just one more to us either: he was the boy in one of the most iconic photographs from that Titanic disaster: the news seller the day after the sinking. That fact draws us into his story (which is excellently told here, if you care to watch this video).
Most people will not have known that that newsboy, Ned, served in the Great War. They won’t even have been aware that Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of his comrades in arms (they were both in artillery regiments). They may even have fought together on the same battlefields. One thing is for certain: the First World War deeply affected both men. Ned Parfett never came home; and Ralph Vaughan Williams came home a different man. Different from the man who enlisted in August of 1914. I think it would be presumptuous to assert that either Ned or Ralph was never frightened. Or that they didn’t wish they were somewhere else than where they were. You may think it cruel fate that Ned was killed just a fortnight before the war’s end. I’m not sure fate is less cruel if it takes a warrior on the first day of conflict instead.
Unlike Sir Keir Starmer, I am not outraged by Mr Trump’s derogatory words. I am saddened by them, and I hope he will one day come to rue having been so judgemental about something of which he has no personal experience. But then again, he is judgemental about so many things of which he has no experience: that marks the difference between him and me, if nothing else.
Mark Rutte, NATO secretary-general and a former prime minister of the Netherlands (and quite a bit of a controversial character when he had that job), has come out with a statement that gives backing to Mr Trump: if people think the EU or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, they should “keep on dreaming”. Well, Mr Trump has said enough things to at least allow Europe to entertain the thought that, if they needed to defend themselves, the US would in fact be one of the less reliable allies that they might count on. To that extent, to dream of self-defence is preferable to relying on something you fear could be nothing but a flimsy show, ready to betray you at the turn of a card. Worse than that: Europe is starting to contemplate the scenario of not only being unable to rely on the US, but of actually having to defend itself against the US. Mr Rutte is perhaps one page behind in this story and needs to do some catching up. But, then again, his job is somewhat tied to the continued existence of NATO, so we must allow him a certain bias.
Perhaps Mr Trump is like those boys plaguing me at school, with their meaningless taunts, baseless if only to prove their difference. If Mr Trump is looking for an excuse to turn against NATO, snatch Greenland, absorb Canada, and turn around and assert that he had every justification for doing so, to whom, precisely, would his justification be addressed? We know that the justifications issued by his cabinet, like Ms Noem, are utter nonsense without any basis in fact. Surely he does not ultimately want to rule the world and then tell Russia and China that he had every justification for doing so? He’s a thug bent on showing himself to be a thug. The policy of a thug is simply to take what he wants and defy all comers to prevent him: you don’t back up brute force with justifications; you back it up with more brute force.
De heer Rutte thinks Europe is dreaming. And Europe fears that mijneer Rutte is dreaming. I suppose they might just both be right.
Here is Ralph Vaughan Williams’s third symphony. The one he wrote after returning from the war. He certainly didn’t stay off the front lines. Nor did they stay off him.